


The Best Laid Plans

by patrokla



Category: Crashing (UK TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, basically kate realizes she's a lesbian, say nyet to het
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 09:46:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9118315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: Kate finds herself at loose ends.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this ages ago when I first watched Crashing and thought that 1) Kate was probably a lesbian and 2) Kate/Melody would be pretty great. 
> 
> Set after the end of Series 1.
> 
> Warnings for all the problems that come with realizing you're not straight after decades of trying to convince yourself that you are.

Looking around the old fire station that is their new home, Kate wonders if intentions actually mean anything. Because she’d definitely intended to move into a proper flat with her fiance, and Melody had intended to go to France or Poland, and Fred had intended to date a man who was capable of saying they were dating.   
  
And yet here they are, Kate living with her ex-fiance and his not-really-new girlfriend, Melody very much in England, and Fred dating Sam, who constantly wants Fred’s attention but doesn't want anyone else to acknowledge that.  
  
Kate thinks it could definitely be worse.  
  
—  
  
She hasn’t slept alone in almost two years. Even when she and Anthony had first started dating, and she’d been terrified of him so much as seeing her bare feet, they’d still shared a bed for warmth. Heating a derelict hospital was near impossible, and astronomically expensive, so it’d made economic sense. That’s what she’d told Anthony, and he’d thought it was adorable.   
  
Now that she’s being more honest with herself, Kate can admit that she likes the presence of someone else in her bed. The warmth, the slight movement of the covers…it’s comforting. She misses it.  
  
She doesn’t particularly miss Anthony. For one thing, he’s still right there, cooking food for all of them and telling awful jokes. For another, she’s too overwhelmed by relief - terrifying in its enormity - to miss him.   
  
She does miss his warmth, though.  
  
—  
  
Melody has taken her up as a fill-in model while Colin's in the hospital.  
  
It’s - nice. Kate likes her sincerity, and, perhaps narcissistically, likes the opportunity to be seen without judgement. To be admired without expectation.  
  
Melody doesn’t ask her to take her shirt off, but Kate usually does.  
  
—  
  
“You know that Melody likes you,” Lulu says one day as she and Kate are putting up a shelf in the erstwhile living room.   
  
“Yes?”   
  
She’d never assumed Melody didn’t like her. They were friends of a sort, and Kate didn’t think Melody would bother to make friends with someone she didn’t like.  
  
“No, I mean. She _likes_ you, like she wants to sleep with you.”  
  
Kate laughs. She can’t help it, the noise involuntarily explodes from her mouth.  
  
“You’re being ridiculous,” she says, and tries to focus on hammering the head of the nail and not her fingers.  
  
“I’m not a lesbian,” she adds after a moment.   
  
“Okay,” Lulu says, “but that doesn’t mean Melody doesn’t want to fuck you.”  
  
“You think everyone wants to fuck everyone,” Kate says.  
  
Lulu smiles at that.  
  
“Not really. I don’t think you want to fuck Anthony.”   
  
Kate can’t think of anything to say to that.   
  
—  
  
“Why do you paint me?”  
  
It’s nearly 3 pm on a Sunday, and Kate has been lying across Melody’s bed, head on her left arm, for almost an hour. Normally she’d be getting drowsy, but Lulu’s comments have been swirling around her head for the last week. They’re nonsense, but - they’ve made her curious.  
  
“Why not? You’re fascinating,” Melody says, words warped around the paintbrush end she’s absentmindedly chewing on as she looks at Kate.   
  
“But I’m not…”   
  
Kate can’t think of how to finish the sentence. _Not a middle-aged overweight man? Not a stand-in for your father?_  
  
“You don’t want to sleep with me,” she says, which isn’t really what she wanted to say, but it works as well as the other alternatives.  
  
“Kate. Don’t be foolish. I would never paint someone I didn’t want to sleep with,” Melody says, taking the paintbrush out of her mouth.   
  
Kate jerks up in alarm at that.  
  
“It just doesn’t work without that tension, that spark,” Melody says, looking at her intently.   
  
“But I’m - And you’re - there’s no spark!” Kate says, and she realizes suddenly that she’s almost naked, and on the bed of a woman who just said she wanted to sleep with her.  
  
“There is,” Melody says, “but it doesn’t mean anything will happen. Now please, lay down.”  
  
Kate does, body moving absently as her head spins.  
  
“Merci,” Melody says, and the room is silent until she says she’s done for the day.  
  
—  
  
Kate doesn’t know who to talk to. She rarely talks about problems, and lately when she does she talks to Melody, but - that’s not an option.  
  
 _I don’t need to talk to anyone about this_ , she tells herself, but the knowledge that Melody wants her, that she thinks there’s a spark is too much to keep to herself.   
  
In the end, she tells Fred.  
  
Actually she tells Fred _and_ Sam, because it’s very difficult to get Fred alone these days. He doesn’t seem to mind it, is constantly smiling and touching Sam, and Kate doesn’t mind, honestly, but she’d really like to get some advice without Sam getting weird - and she knows he’ll get weird.  
  
“So, Fred,” she says, trying her best to ignore Sam, who’s got his face pressed into Fred’s shoulder. “How did you, erm. I mean. What would you do, if a woman was interested in you?”  
  
“Umm,” Fred says, “well I suppose I’d tell her that I wasn’t interested in her. Because I’m gay.”  
  
“Right,” Kate says slowly, “I - I’m not talking about me, Fred. This is a hypothetical situation. And you can stop glaring at me, Sam.”  
  
“I’m not glaring!” Sam says. “Why would I glare?”  
  
Kate ignores that.  
  
“It’s more. I mean, what if a woman liked you, and she said that the two of you had a spark? And you don’t agree with her, because you’re pretty sure that you don’t like women.”  
  
“I’m really not sure I’m the best person to ask about this,” Fred says, “That’s never really - I’m pretty obviously gay, Kate.”  
  
“You should talk to Melody,” Sam says, and Kate narrows her eyes at him.  
  
“Melody has nothing to do with this,” she says, not terribly convincingly.   
  
“Sure,” Fred says. “But she’s very intuitive, you know. She might be able to help you with this hypothetical problem.”  
  
“She can’t,” Kate says a bit too quickly. “I mean. I’m sure she’s busy. Colin’s coming home from the hospital soon, so.”  
  
“It’s just a suggestion,” Fred says evenly, but she feels like he knows exactly what’s going through her head.  
  
—  
  
The problem is that, for all that Kate insists that she’s not a lesbian, she - wonders, sometimes. About what it would be like, with a woman. If it would be better.  
  
Not that it was _bad_ with Anthony, or her one boyfriend at uni. It was okay. But she feels like she’s missing something; even with the whole crying thing something had been missing.  
  
And wondering is probably normal, isn’t it? Everyone’s thought about getting off with someone of the same gender a few times, just out of curiousity.   
  
And thinking women are much more beautiful than men is also quite normal. Men aren’t supposed to be beautiful. This is all quite normal.   
  
Right.


End file.
